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Yet more fraudsters found targeting FE colleges

Colleges have again been warned to be vigilant after fraudsters posing as principals have been foiled in a string of attempted scams to hit the sector.

Harlow College first raised the alarm about bogus emails requesting money transfers, but FE Week understands that at least three more colleges — Walsall, Exeter, and Harrow — have received similar communications, with some reporting the incidents to local police.

Deanne Morgan, director of financial services at Harlow College, told FE Week that the scammers had sent several emails, purporting to be from principal Karen Spencer, requesting urgent payment.

But despite looking “very realistic”, staff identified them as fake and thwarted the fraudsters.

One email sent to Ms Morgan read: “Hi Deanne, hope your day is going on fine. I need you to make a same day UK payment for me.

“Kindly email me the required details you will need to send out the payment. I will appreciate a swift email response. Kind regards, Karen Spencer.”

Ms Morgan immediately queried the request with her principal through a different address, and it was quickly confirmed as a scam.

She has since sent an email to other colleagues in the FE sector warning them to be wary of this type of con.

She wrote: “Recently I have received several emails seeming to be from my principal which are scams.

“They obviously do their homework and know who the principal is and head of finance person is (and spell my name correctly — which is very rare), with very realistic imitation email addresses.

“One email was from the ‘principal’ requesting an urgent payment. So be aware that these kind of scams are circulating.”

FE Week reported on a similar incident last year when another fraudster, posing this time as the principal of Westminster Kingsway College, was stopped after requesting an urgent payment of their own.

Again, the request appeared to be genuine, but staff noticed the reply didn’t match the principal’s email address and checked with the boss himself.